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Accounting Values

Culture plays a significant role in influencing and explaining behavior in social systems. According to Hofstede, there are four value dimensions, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and femininity. Gray develops four accounting values on the basis ofHofstede(1984)’s culture dimensions.

Accounting values| | Professionalism| A preference for the exercise of individual professional judgment and the maintenance of professional self-regulation as opposed to compliance with prescriptive legal requirements and statutory control| Uniformity| Preference for the enforcement of uniform accounting practices between companies and for the consistent use of such practices over time as opposed to flexibility in accordance with the perceived circumstances of individual companies.| Conservatism| Preference for a cautious approach to measurement so as to cope with the uncertainty of future events s opposed to a more optimistic, laissez-faire, risk-taking approach.| Secrecy| Preference for confidentiality and the restriction of disclosure of information about the business only to those who are closely involved with its management and financing as opposed to a more transparent, open and publicly accountable approach| Gray （1988）

Statutory control

Flexibility Uniformity

Germanic

Anglo

Professionalism
Gray (1988)

Secrecy

Germanic

Optimism Conservatism

Anglo

Transparency
Gray (1988)

Accounting values for USA and UK are tended to be professionalism. However, German is more close to statutory control. This is because the index of individualism of USA and UK are higher than that of German. In developed countries like UK and USA, providing “a true and fair view”of a company’s financial results rely on theprofessionalaccountants’judgment.However, in German,professional accountants concern much more on detailed...

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The affect the four dimensions, Power Distance, Uncertainty avoidance, Masculine/femininity and Individual v. Collectivism have on organzational behavior shows in all cultures and cross cultures.
As with power distance when dealing with other cultures you have to adapt your company values to that of the society in which you live and the people that you employ and the public that you deal with. In organizational behavior you have to be able to adapt or willingly participate and follow through on those culture beliefs of society. So your management structure has to follow the structure of that society while understanding uncertainty avoidance knowing that certain cultures like to have rules stressed, want work regulated and are willing to work hard, conform to standards and are very secure in their jobs. While some other cultures don't have as many rules or less conforming, security is not as stressed and hard work is not seen as normal life, although if you are willing to stand out by doing a job that is not expected or coming up with an idea this is more valued because it is seen as taking a risk.
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...Introduction
A personal and/or cultural value is an absolute or relative ethical value, the assumption of which can be the basis for ethical action. A value system is a set of consistent values and measures. A principle value is a foundation upon which other values and measures of integrity are based. Those values which are not physiologically determined and normally considered objective, such as a desire to avoid physical pain, seek pleasure, etc., are considered subjective, vary across individuals and cultures and are in many ways aligned with belief and belief systems. Types of values include ethical/moral values, doctrinal/ideological (religious, political) values, social values, and aesthetic values. It is debated whether some values which aren't clearly physiologically determined are intrinsic such as altruism and whether some such as acquisitiveness should be valued as vices or virtues. Values have typically been studied in sociology; anthropology; social psychology; moral philosophy and business ethics.
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...evolved combining the core values and the current society’s value.
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In Kelley, MacNab and Worthle (2006) paper, they have studied that when two or more diverse cultures are combined together, depending on how strong the county’s core national culture, three things may occur – culture convergence, divergence or crossvergence. Their study of US, Hongkong and Taiwan for years had gave them results on how culture can change. Like for example is in terms of uncertainty avoidance and power distance between Hongkong and Taiwan. It was found that Hongkong increases its uncertainty avoidance than Taiwan and the reason for this could be because Hongkong was turn over from UK to China. US known to be the first individualist country from previous studies appears to becoming collectivist and the power distance increases from their study of US banking industry. This one has been attributed to the layoffs happened in banking industry when the study was conducted. The authors remarked that Culture can change due to influences like globalization, economic and technological change brought by outside forces and interactions. On the other hand, they have argued that there is some cultural aspect that remains static.
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1
"How does one explain these findings? … Because people are likely to seek jobs that provide a good person-job fit, reports of high satisfaction shouldn't be totally surprising. Second, based on our knowledge of cognitive dissonance theory (discussed in this chapter), we might expect employees to resolve inconsistencies between dissatisfaction with their jobs and their staying with those jobs by not reporting the dissatisfaction. So these positive findings might be tainted by efforts to reduce dissonance" (p. 61). tainted = belastet, „verdorben“
2
VALUESValues:
Basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence.
Value System: A hierarchy based on a ranking of an individual's
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ABSTRACT
Culture was broadly ignored and was flooded in the concept of environmental factors influencing the accounting changes. However, research has shown that culture had a huge role in accounting development and changes. In this essay, we are going to develop Gray’s theory about the relationship between culture and accounting. This essay is mainly based on Gray’s theory as Gray was one of the first authors to explore the culture’s way to explain the changes in accounting. Prior to that demonstration we will define the concept of culture as it is seen by Geert Hofstede, as we judged that his definition of the concept of culture was the most acceptable in our analysis. Finally, we will show some exception to the Gray’s framework to criticize the real influence of culture on accounting systems.
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